QUANTICO by Greg Bear -- a Bookman Review

Greg Bear is an excellent science fiction writer. I have read many of his EON/Way series and enjoyed them immensely. Many of the best of the S-F writers have some difficulty transferring skills from the genre to so called ‘mainstream' fiction and Bear is getting much much closer than most.

QUANTICO begins with several storylines running concurrently, spreads across and back through a timeline or two and ends up with most of the characters arriving at approximately the same time and place appropriately.

No spoilers in this review, but I did find one thing that bothered me as far as the bioweapon transmission scenario was concerned, let us see if you, gentle reader, have the same reaction.

Bear weaves an enjoyable yarn. There is just enough action to keep things moving, enough ‘tech' to make things plausible, and enough character development to keep the reader interested. I did rather resent the way one or two characters were handled toward the end but there were enough plot twists to relieve that.  The construction of dynamic tension between several of the characters and a selection of ‘bad guys' add to the surprise and enjoyablity of the book.

One character in particular, a female mid-grade FBI agent is very well rendered. A new mandatory retirement age statue has several of the characters on the run and her reaction to it is most interesting.

QUANTICO is set in the near term, set in a world close enough to our own that is crackles with lives we could know, set accurately enough to bring us fully into his world and human enough to make it believable.

Recently on GATHER.COM Bear explained that he had the idea for the book when he was brought into a government conference for his input on what MIGHT happen, and QUANTICO was the result of that concentrated thought.

Let us hope that it never DOES happen and that it stays fiction for many lifetimes to come.